A Lil Pet Peeve of Mine - Page 3

Sam,
Agreed, but you would be surprised how many handlers jump when the attack comes !! It is always good for a laugh afterwords !
Ulli

Ulli, don't you worry at all about your English and there's no need to apologize! I certainly wasn't trying to imply that was the issue - after all it's a about a 100 million times better than my German!

Hope no offence is taken,

AandA

AandA,
dont worry, no offense was taken, at no point. Actually, it's nice that we still can have a conversation here in a nice manner.
Ulli

AandA,
dont worry, no offense was taken, at no point. Actually, it's nice that we still can have a conversation here in a nice manner.
Ulli

 Hey Ulli,

Thanks for all the valuable information. You said:

" It depends heavily on the situation a threat occures, might look threatening to you, but maybe not to your dog".

Although it is common sense and at some level I am very aware of this phenomenon, there is something about seeing it in writing.  That spoke volumes to me and in many ways summarizes everything else you are explaining here. 

I really, really like your "night trail" test/training opportunity. It would be an interesting experience for most people with their dogs. 

Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us here. You english is absolutely no problem! In fact, sadly, it is better than many people born, raised, and educated here! 

Basically, like you say, you can take any 2 pups from a litter (similar in humans). They are born with a certain number of traits and levels of those traits; however, their environment then strengthens or diminishes those traits. That said, until one is placed in any given situation, you just do not know-same as humans as someone said above. 

Getting a little off track from the original topic but here's a thread that goes into a little more detail regarding temperament & inheritability.

www.pedigreedatabase.com/gsd/bulletins_read/310637.html

AandA

Ulli,
As usual excellent posts, thank you! 

JC,
You wrote:

Schutzhund dogs and PPDs are not the same thing; and I get so tired of people confusing this; especially people who say they want a "trained schutzhund dog for protection."

That is because most people do not know any better.  They think a SchH trained dog is a PPD.

It's been my observation that most PPDs, Military- and Police-dogs can do Schutzhund; but many sport dogs are only trained to focus on the sleeve, rather than the decoy.

That is very true.  It comes down to training.  There are some of us who train very seriously and our SchH dogs will work for real.  Not everyone works their SchH dogs entirely in prey, and SchH is not a game to every dog.  I prefer a SchH dog that as a serious civil side.  It is much more impressive to watch in a trial and much more fun to work and decoy for. 

People who say they want, or worse yet -buy!- a Schutzhund dog, then wind up surprised when it doesn't do anything but go after a sleeve, frustrate me. Sure some sport dogs are decoy-focused, especially those trained on a hidden sleeve... but as a general rule if people want a PPD they should get a dog specifically for that.

AGAIN IT IS ABOUT THE TRAINING.  I will steal a thought from Bob McKown:  I may want to protect myself or my family from a mugger or thief, I may have the nerve, heart and desire to do it.  But wouldn't I be more effective if I had some training in judo or other forms of self defense?  Even a schH trained dog is better than a similar untrained dog. 

Schutzhund, Rings, KNVP... they're sports to demonstrate ability, rather than real-life application thereof. 

That is true, but isn't a PPD training a sport for the dog?  Doesn't the dog sense equipment?  Can't the dog smell a hidden sleeve? Sure it can.  You can try to make it as realistic as possible, but if equipment is involved it is still training for the dog.  So one sport done well can prepare a dog with the right temperament.  Ring, PSA although perhaps not as stringent a routine as SchH is still a sport with a guy wearing a suit. How do most PPD training differ from this?  

I do really like Ulli's idea of the night trial, because as he says the handlers get startled. 
Agreed, but you would be surprised how many handlers jump when the attack comes !! It is always good for a laugh afterwords !

 For a PPD, IMO, a big part of the training has to incorporate stressing the handler.  And the handler has to be able to control or deploy their dog under stress properly.   Any one who has gone to an SchH trial or any canine event has seen handlers say "my dog has never done that before."  The reason is that the dog has probably never seen the handler so stressed out before.  Dogs are experts at reading body language and pick up on subtle cues.  If you want to have an idea of what your dog will do to defend you or how it will react you need to set up a training scenario where the handler is stressed and surprised than pressure the dog.  It is a whole different world and dogs will surprise you.  Some good some bad.    

JMO FWIW,

Jim

JC,
For SchH it really is up to the handler and decoy.  SchH being a sport and graded on the fullness of the bite and not necessarily the hardness there are reasons to be friendly to the dog periodically.  For MWD"S and Police K9's hardness counts and no one grades our "real bites" (except me, I want hard and full) on fullness.  We want dogs that bite hard and sometimes a frontal bite is very hard and does a lot of damage.  It really depends on the ultimate goal of the training.  I agree for a MWD the decoy needs to be a very bad guy, just like a police dog.  I certainly decoy differently for police dogs and SchH dogs.

Jim

Ulli, the handler surprise is undoubtedly worth a good laugh.

Some clubs even have a prize for the category of "My dog never did that before!" The cameraderie has to be good to get away with such  a prize.

Slamdunc, you say: Dogs are experts at reading body language and pick up on subtle cues.

Agreed. I think that besides visual cues, they are also smelling the chemicals that the human body produces under stress. They can smell both stress and fear long before we can.

How do you decoy differently for police dogs and SchH dogs? I think I know what you mean from attending K-9 demos, but I am neither a LEO nor a decoy. I'm sure I miss some of the things that are going on.